


it's gone now

by INMH



Series: hc_bingo fanfiction fills 2020 [38]
Category: The Dark Pictures: Little Hope (Video Game)
Genre: Amnesia, Drama, During Canon, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Injury, Spoilers, Strong Language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-24
Updated: 2020-11-24
Packaged: 2021-03-10 04:20:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,016
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27627370
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/INMH/pseuds/INMH
Summary: Andrew awakes after the crash.
Series: hc_bingo fanfiction fills 2020 [38]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1789369
Comments: 2
Kudos: 24





	it's gone now

He opens his eyes, and immediately shuts them again.  
 _  
Bright_.  
  
Too bright. Too much brightness against the dark. It sends lightning shooting behind his eyes and into his brain, a deep and vengeful throb that unsteadies him even though he’s sitting down, propped up against cold metal. His head is pounding, and his neck is aching furiously.  
  
He opens his eyes again, slower this time.  
  
There is a man kneeling in front of him; his face is familiar, but everything else about him is blank. The man’s voice has been in the background ever since he regained consciousness, a blur of sound intermixed with the voice of an equally familiar-but-unfamiliar woman wandering around nearby.  
  
“Hey, Andrew, buddy, how are you doing?”  
 _  
Andrew._  
 _  
I’m Andrew?_  
  
He tries to account for other basic information- age, hometown, basic interests, the inside of his home, where he’s been today- and finds that everything it coming up curiously, alarmingly blank.  
  
“Where are we?” Andrew asks, because there are a million and one questions swirling in his banging head and that one makes as much sense to pose as any of the others. “What happened?”  
  
“The bus crashed. We’re okay, though, just shaken up.”  
  
“If you say so.” Andrew feels more than just ‘shaken up’, but the enormity of his problem is difficult to put into words. “I don’t remember being in any crash.”  
  
“You’re probably in shock, maybe a mild concussion in there too- give yourself some time.” The man looks up, and then rises to his feet. “Stay here, don’t move.”  
  
It’s only in watching him trot a few feet away that Andrew realizes that he is propped up against the roof of the crashed bus. The light that had blinded him before is coming from the side of the bus lying on the pavement; it’s blinking intermittently, a golden-orange light that’s reflecting off the shattered glass spread across the road.  
  
“Fucking thing! Useless piece of crap!” The girl is snarling as she spins in place, cell phone held high. “May as well be dead.”  
  
“Okay, take it easy, we’ll figure out what to do,” the man says, stepping away from the bus and holding up his hands.  
 _  
I should know their names,_ Andrew considers as they wander back over to him. _They know my name, I should know theirs. And I don’t._  
  
“Taylor, can you bring your phone up right- yeah, right there,” The man says as the girl ( _Taylor_ ) lifts her cell phone to hover over Andrew’s head. He squints even against the dim artificial light as the man lightly pushes his head from side to side, examining. “Bruises,” The man mutters. “And the cut on the forehead. Nothing too bad, I think. Should be fine with time.”  
  
“Hey, anyone up there?”  
  
Taylor and the man look up, heads whipping towards the side of the road. “Hey, Daniel, that you?” The man calls.  
  
“John, good to hear you!” Another voice echoes back.  
  
“Daniel?!”  
  
They hurry to the side of the road. Andrew thinks to follow them, but coordinating his heavy and uncooperative body is too much for him. Instead he slumps back against the bus. That orange light from the side of the bus is still flashing sporadically, and it almost looks like…  
 _  
Oh_.  
  
There is something Andrew remembers: The dream.  
  
The house, the fire, those people dying- the little girl burning to death, the man being crushed, the boy being impaled, and the older girl disappearing into the burning room and never emerging; the heat on his face, and then all around him.  
  
Andrew shudders violently, like he’s been dipped into freezing water.  
  
The memory of the dream fills him with a horrible, biting sort of dread. Something pushes at his mind, a creeping sense that he is forgetting something very, _very_ important- and very, very ugly.  
  
“Help me get Andrew up on his feet, would you?”  
  
Taylor and the man have returned, have refocused their attention on Andrew. The voice from the side of the road is gone.  
  
“Wait,” Andrew says, because now seems like the last socially acceptable moment to fess up to it, “I don’t remember anything. Who… Who are you?”  
  
“It’s okay, you’re concussed: I’m John, your college professor. We were taking a bus on a field trip, but that didn’t work out so well. Crash wasn’t on the curriculum.” The man ( _John_ ) laughs a little, and Andrew feels like he should be making a polite, token effort at pretending he’s amused, but right now it’s too much effort. “We’ll find the others, get some help; think of it as a character-building exercise.”  
  
Taylor holds out her hand; Andrew takes it, and she pulls him to his feet.  
  
He sways in place, and she and John steady him.  
  
“I had this dream,” Andrew says, because as awful as the memory of the dream is it’s his only thing he has right now. “Flames all around us. It was… Grim.”  
  
(He won’t realize until much later that he said ‘ _us_ ’ and understand the loaded meaning behind it.)  
  
Taylor smiles. “That bang on the head must’ve been a beauty,” she chuckles.  
  
(Friends? Are they friends?)  
  
“That trail the others are on will come out down the road; we’ll meet them there,” John says, about the male voice ( _Daniel_ ) from before and someone else? A few others? Andrew isn’t certain, doesn’t know if they’re meeting a group or a few others.  
  
No, probably only a few.  
  
Taylor is reluctant to leave the bus; dad reassures her.  
  
With a crash like this, the odds of there being a large group of people uninjured is low. It has to only be two or three people on the trail.  
  
They’re only missing the bus driver.  
  
Tanya relents, agreeing that heading into town is the better idea; John seems surprised that she’s willing to make the admission.  
  
Andrew doesn’t really care. He just badly wants to get somewhere he can put his head down and rest for a while.  
  
“Stick close behind me,” John says.  
  
They set off down the road.  
  
(It really is a miracle they’re all alive.)  
  
-End


End file.
